Everyday, people make choices about whether or not to comply with societal laws they disagree with.
Is it better for the sake of order to simply go along with rules one does not believe to be just?
Or is it better to peacefully disobey the law and risk arrest and imprisonment?
Or take up violence against the corrupted state?
Joel Salatin and John Moody met while purposefully breaking the federal food laws, infused with an injection of humor. For months, they invited leadership of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to join them and a couple hundred mothers, farmers and homesteaders for raw milk and cookies on the steps of the FDA headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. The raw milk for the event was purchased legally in Pennsylvania and then illegally crossed the state line into Maryland where it was consumed. The mothers, farmers and homesteaders showed up, the government officials did not. Even though the smuggling of raw milk across state lines was illegal, no one was arrested.
Nevertheless, a lifelong friendship was forged in the fires of good natured defiance.
Years later, over lunch at a farming conference, John and Joel got to talking about all the federal and state regulations their businesses were being compelled to follow. The fees, the paperwork, the invasive tracking. They were tired of it all and wanted to fight back. So they chose to start the Rogue Food Conference a place where farmers and homesteaders could strategize ways to creatively work around the rules.
The bold new idea was followed by a cascade of stories. Renegade farmers who had come up with remarkably clever ideas on how to sidestep the laws in order to provide neighbors and community members with local food. The pizza club in Missouri where if you buy a membership to the club, you get free pizza. Because the pizza is free, no regulation is necessary. The statewide ban of raw milk in Florida that was cleverly bypassed by making the sale of raw milk for pets legal. Of course, if you happen to drink your pet food, that’s on you. Or, in a nod to old British agistment laws, commonly known as the herdshare- dairy farmers sell shares of a goat herd or a cow herd that then give their customers (co-owners of the herd) access to the raw milk from the animals. This arrangement has circumvented raw milk laws in a number of states. Or the private farmers market in Stockholm, Maine where people sign a waiver taking responsibility for what they eat, or put another way to allow them to eat unregulated food.
It’s good to see so much humor in the food freedom movement, because usually, if you’ve got people laughing, you’re winning.
Anyhoos, they launched the first Rogue Food Conference in an airport hotel in Cincinnati a few weeks before COVID lockdowns hit. The event was a hit, and in a memorable story, no one left the convention floor for a good five minutes after the final speaker finished. People who had spent so many decades fighting ludicrous laws, seemingly in isolation, were able to share the experience with others just like them. To laugh, to cry, to innovate.
In the years since, John and Joel have continued the conference twice a year in different locales across America, helping to both spread and listen to creative circumvention around the U.S. The next one is in September, once again in the Cincinnati area. We’ll be there to film for our next documentary The Right to Food. Maybe we’ll see each other there.
best thoughts,
Graham
p.s. A huge thanks to our fifty paying subscribers who make this work possible.
Share this post